Security in a variety of settings, such as at national borders, at public events, and on mass transportation, is more of a concern than ever before. Atrocities have been committed all around the world in the past several years. Tragically, many of these tragedies were committed by known criminals or terrorists, and might have been prevented had the perpetrators been discovered entering the nation, arriving at the venue, or upon boarding the conveyance. Being able to identify undesired persons and deny them access to places or situations where they might do harm could be of tremendous benefit. Similarly, being able to identify desired persons seeking entry to secured facilities and denying access to all others would also be a tremendous security benefit.
Image or facial recognition might be used to detect perpetrators, but there are several concerns which limit the practicability of currently performing accurate recognition. First, the most accepted and accurate means of recognition is human recognition of a known person, which presents many shortcomings. Among the myriad problems with reliance on human recognition are the costs of staffing, the tendency of the staff to become tired or distracted (either by chance distractions or deliberate diversions), the inability of most people to remember more than a few target faces, and the ability to fool human observers with simple disguises. Second, current automated technology also has many shortcomings. Typically, two-dimensional recognition is attempted by trying to correlate a subject being tested against a database of two-dimensional images. Such techniques result in many missed identifications and false positives. Moreover, these two-dimensional techniques also can be fooled with simple disguises, just as human observers can be fooled.
Other technologies used for imaging also have drawbacks. Image recognition based on other than two-dimensional data would use a reference database of other than two-dimensional data to detect sought-after subjects. Gathering such data requires cooperation from the subjects that is not likely forthcoming. Further, at present, covert means to collect such data is unavailable.
Thus, there is an unmet need in the art for an automated human identification technology that is accurate and practical such that criminals or terrorists can be reliably detected with a minimum of false positives thereby enhancing the security of individuals.